Investigating the Cross-Cultural
Connection Between Music and Religious Experience

by Robin Sylvan

Music fills the air and deep
rhythms lock into an irresistable groove.
Swept up in the beat, the dancers
enter
into profound altered
states of consciousness, surrendering to the ecstasy
of trance.
Powerful energies move through their bodies as gateways to the spirit world
open and they feel the awesome presence of the sacred.

Sound familiar? Many of us
have had these kinds of life-changing, almost religious experiences on
the dance floor at psychedelic
trance
parties or other electronic dance music events. But this description could
just as easily be an account of ceremonies that take place among shamans
of Siberia or possession dancers of West Africa. While it may be
a revelation for many who live in contemporary Western culture that the
combination of music, rhythm, and trance dance can be a powerful source
of religious experience, this phenomenon is actually very old, and and
has been found in almost every culture around the world throughout the
ages. A secret life of trance has been hidden in the West, an ancient tradition
of ecstasy that is our heritage, an underground stream of spirituality
we can tap into when we enter into psychological entrainment on the dance
floor.

Shamanism: Our Oldest Religion

Shamanism may well be our
oldest form of religion, going back over 50,000 years to our days as hunters
and gatherers. The shaman is a strange and charismatic figure, someone
who has died and been reborn, who can travel to the spirit worlds, and
who functions simultaneously as priest, healer, and diviner in the community.
The key vehicle used by the shaman for spirit journeys and healing work
is the drum,
which is often conceptualized as a horse that the shaman rides. A
loud and steady continuous beat moves the shaman into a trance state, enabling
travel to the underworlds
or
upperworlds, conversations with medicine animals and spirit beings,
encounter with death, retrieval of lost souls, and healing powers or visions.

Once a religious complex that spanned the globe,
shamanism is still extant in Siberia, Lapland, and Central Asia. Parts
of this complex can be found in diverse cultures like the Huichol
Indians
of Mexico or the indigenous Bon-Po religion of Tibet.

West African Traditions

In the shamanistic trance
state, the shaman's spirit travels out of the body into the spiritual worlds.
In the possession dances of cultures like the Fon and the Yoruba of West
Africa, this directionality is reversed: the spirit beings travel from
their worlds into the body of the dancer so that they can be physically
incarnated and present in this world. In these music-religious traditions,
the rhythm of the drums also plays a central role. Gods or deities(called
loa among the Fon or orisha among the Yoruba) have their own distinctive
rhythm and chant that is played by a small drum ensemble. The priests and
priestesses dance for long periods of time,
entering into trance states, until one or more of them is possessed by
a deity, usually signaled by shaking that comes over the possessed dancer.
The personality of the dancer disappears and is replaced by that of the
deity. The dancer's face, body language,
movements, and behavior change dramatically. When the head priest
or priestess identifies the possessing deity the possessed dancer is dressed
in the appropriate clothes of that deity and will then conduct healings,
consultations, or divinations. Many dancers can be possessed at the same
time and the proceedings can get quite intense.
After returning from the possession state, the dancer has no memory
of what happened.

When the Fon and the Yoruba
were brought to the Americas in the slave trade, parts of this musico-religious
complex made their way into African American religions like Vodun, Santeria,
and Candomble, the black churches in the U.S., and even into seemingly
secular musical strains like the Blues, which forms the foundation
for
much of today's popular music.

Tuning the Bodily Systems

The traditions of the Fon and Yoruba are just two
of countless traditions across the planet in which music plays a central
role in triggering deep religious experiences. It is no surprise that music
and religion are so closely linked. Both are multi-dimensional phenomena
that simultaneously integrate many different levels of reality.
At the physiological level, for example, music creates a shift in the body's
various subsystems & heartbeat, breathing rate, muscular activity,
brainwaves, nervous system, etc. When the music is strongly rhythmic,
it 'tunes' the rhythms of all of these bodily systems and synchronizes
them, especially if one is dancing to the rhythm. On top of this synchronization,
certain musical techniques then amplify the physical effects to create
'peaks,' particularly the combination of accelerating the tempo (accelerando)
and increasing the volume and instrumental density (crescendo). At the
psychological level, this peak often translates into the induction of trance
states in which the day-to-day functioning of the psyche is restructured:
the ego and rational mind are bypassed, strong emotions and feelings are
invoked, and powerful altered states of consciousness are accessed.

Traveling between Physical
and Spiritual Worlds

These states are linked to
symbolic meanings implicit in the organizational structure of the music.
Certain melodies or rhythms can create associations with the external world,
people, places, events, or even whole cultural systems. One obvious example
of this is the first time each of us 'got it' on the dance floor of a party;
from then on, hearing that music triggers an association with that party
and the meaning that experience holds for us. More importantly, music can
also createassociations with the internal
world (or worlds), opening into virtual
landscapes
of the imagination
that are intrinsically connected to the realm of the sacred. In other words,
music establishes a link between this world and the spiritual world, and
provides a vehicle for traveling between them.

As we have seen in many cultures,
the use of music in a ritual context is often specifically designed to
do this. Thus, in Indian traditions, for example, ìthe musical notes
are the physical manifestations of the Highest Reality
termed Nada-Brahman.
Music is not a mere accompaniment in religious worship; it is religious
worship itself. This demonstrates the integration of the physical, psychological,
socio-cultural, symbolic, virtual, ritual, and spiritual levels are all
merged into a unified field. There is no separation between music and listeners
and dancers, subject and object, mind and feelings and body, physical and
spiritual worlds and beings; there is only a seamless multi-dimensional
continuum of ecstatic
musical
experience. It is this extraordinary musical realm we touch into every
time we hit that peak on the dance floor and all those dimensions
and worlds and beings are present within the unified field of that experiential
state.

Reaching Back to the Future

Electronic dance music parties
can bring us into contact
with
this continuum and the experience can be profound, even transformative.
Yet, what we are experiencing are baby steps compared to the sophisticated
knowledge and techniques of this musico-religious terrain that has evolved
over
thousands of years. These traditions know the contours of the landscape
intimately, the energies and entities that inhabit it, how to travel to
precise coordinates and call specific beings and, perhaps most importantly,
how to use the incredible powers that are generated for healing, counseling,
divination, and the restoration of harmony.

There is a great deal these
traditions can teach us that can make our gatherings more powerful and
connected at a spiritual and ritual level. At the same time, we are also
contributing something innovative and fresh to this ancient heritage of
musical trance. The new kinds of sounds and complex compositions produced
by our contemporary artists using electronic tools allows us to travel
to new varieties of trancescapes. The added effects of immersive multimedia
environments, not to mention more sophisicated understanding and use of
psychedelic drugs (including new designer drugs) adds up to a new chapter
in the long history of trance experiences. The cut and paste hybridized
nature of the musical and cultural production techniques reflects a sophisticated
postmodern sensibility that can process the vast amounts of information
of
the contemporary world in a creative way.

Finally, there is the matter of where the foundations
for
an alternative global culture that transcends outmoded divisions of race,
class, ethnicity, gender, and nationstate are being built on the dance
floors of our parties. So, while we respect and celebrate our roots in
the ancient heritage of trance music, we are also taking the tradition
forward to the next level of manifestation in the new millennium.